The new and improved Hermione
by NemiFlower
Summary: You know all those stories where Hermione just turns up at platform 9 34 looking like Barbie? This is my feeble attempt on how that really would work. You know, changing your personality is not an easy thing to do...


Disclaimer: Not mine.

Hermione Granger woke up at 8 30 in the morning. As it was the start of the summer holidays, most normal 16 year olds would have slept in, but Hermione had never really understood the point of that.

Why would you waist the entire day in bed and stay up all night? I mean, nothing happens at night! You might as well sleep…

She got up and put on some clean clothes, a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. Then she made herself breakfast, ate, cleared away the dishes, brushed her hair and teeth, and so on.

When she was done she sat down on the sofa. Her parents were camping, and since she detested that sort of thing, she was left home alone for some days.

"What to do now?" she thought. Hermione had been wanting to start on next years curriculum, what with her NEWTs coming up and all, but the booklists were not due for months. She new she might not be going back to Hogwarts, but she figured that only made it more important to learn everything by herself. Because nothing, not even Voldemort was going to stop her from getting top marks at her NEWTs.

"Oh, come on Hermione, you can't just sit here all day!" she said to herself. "Oh, God this is boring".

"Right you are" a voice inside her head said. "But of course, you should be used to that…"

"Hey, what was that you said?" Hermione said, before adding "And why am I talking to myself?"

"I said that you should be used to boring things. If you need me to decipher that for you, it means that you are boring. As to why you are talking to yourself, I do not believe I am the right person to answer. A shrink, perhaps." The voice answered rudely.

"I am not boring!" Hermione said furiously. "I have a large specter of interests"

"Yeah right" the voice said sounding bored. "Like what?"

"Like reading, and S.P.E.W, and school, and… a-and…" Hermione said, starting to lose her confidence. Maybe the voice was right, maybe she was boring.

"Told you so" the voice said teasingly.

"Wait a minute" Hermione said. "Can you read my mind?"

"Duh, I _am_ you mind" the voice said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Ever heard of Timmy Grasshopper? He's my brother in law."

"Really" Hermione said flatly. "Oh, never mind; just leave me alone so I can think."

"Righto!" the voice said. "I have to go menace a certain Ronald Weasley about his feelings for you either way so, later!"

"Yeah, later..."

Well, that certainly had been interesting. She had never seen herself as boring, but come to think of it, she really did not have many interests, or friends, or anything really. Even her clothes were tragically boring. "White t-shirt and jeans. Yeah, really imaginative" she thought sarcastically.

"I wonder what other people think of me. Gosh, they must have gotten really sick of all this. How do they put up with me?" She thought sighing.

"Well, I am going to change. No more miss boring clothes, only two friends, know-it-all, er… Boring… Person... "

"Yeah!"

"Starting right now!"

So she found a pen and a piece of paper, as was her habit, and started thinking of what to write.

"Hm…" She thought. "First I have to decide what I am going to be like… I don't think the sporty kind is for me… And I would not last long as a bimbo, seeing I'm top in every class… All that punk stuff seems to be kind of popular, but I don't think that exists in the wizarding world… Oh, I know! The femme fatale! I mean, it even has a cool name, and it can all be explained as "coming out of my shell" or whatever. This is going to be great!

She began scribbling furiously, and after about half an hour, this is what the list looked like:

**Femme Fatale**

**Buy new clothes. Focus esp. on underwear.**

**Learn how to use makeup. (ask Lavender for advise)**

**Do something with hair.**

**Rehearse flirting in front of mirror.**

**Buy lots of fashion-magazines.**

**Learn how to wear heals. (ask Lavender)**

**Loose 5-6 pounds.**

**Get a tan. (self-tanning potion?)**

**Start wearing perfume.**

**Learn how to small-talk (music, movies etc)**

**Learn about star-signs. (Lavender again)**

"And-that should be about it…" Hermione thought while putting the last point on the list. "You know, I bet this is not hard at all. It looks like walk in the park, anyway. So, what's first?" She looked down at the piece of paper lying before her at the table.

"Buy new clothes, eh?" luckily, Hermione had always saved most of her money. She never had that much of an interest for clothes and her parents; being dentist, never let her buy a lot of sweets.

Thanks to this she had a reasonable sum of muggle money lying in the bank. As the responsible girl she was, cross that, _used to be_, she had been saving them for her education, but oh well, these are the new times.

So, Hermione apperated to London (where else) and went shopping. She really had no experience what so ever when it came to clothes, fashion and shopping in general, so she simply walked in to the closest store. Ten second later she was out again, blushing.

"That was perhaps a bit too much to start with" she thought.

Well, Hermione was not the kind of girl who would give up after one (though embarrassing) failure, so she walked on, making a vow to look in the window before entering a shop the next time.

After about five minutes she found another, more promising shop. Through the window she could see rather elegant clothes, both casual things and dresses. She walked in and started seeing through the clothes. There were many rather nice things, and several she normally would have liked to try on, but this was nothing near normally.

She was not looking for anything she would have liked trying on. Why? Because they all qualified as boring. What Hermione was looking for was something colourful, something glittery, something tight and a teensy, weensy bit daring.

"Excuse me miss, can I help you?" a young, short woman who worked there asked.

"Yes, you can" Hermione answered. "I these are all lovely clothes, but they are not exactly what I am looking for."

"And what would that be?" the woman asked politely.

"I was thinking something a bit more… How do I put it…? Less boring!"

"Oh, I see." The woman said. "Well, we have a lot of more colorful things if you would like to come this way"

Hermione followed the woman though the shop to a row of clothes. These were different in the sense that they had much more color and were more interesting to look at. There was really nothing _wrong_ with them, but again, she was looking for something else…

"You haven't got anything more sluty?" Hermione asked before thinking.

"…" the woman said, obviously startled by Hermiones directness. "Er, I am not sure I understand what you are looking for" she faltered.

Hermione figured she might as well spill it as she anyway had already humiliated herself. It surely could not get any worse by explaining a bit further.

"You see, I am tired of being this boring person who no one likes or considers as anything else than a walking brain with bushy hair! So, I thought that I could change a bit. You know, become more likeable and popular and all, and for this, some sluty clothes definitely are a must."

"I see…" The woman said, her fingers playing with her dark hair. "Well, I don't think we have anything of that sort here, but I know of a store just down the street from here, which leads a much more… Young collection. They might have something for you there."

"Thank you ever so much! I will try that. Bye!" Hermione said. Her spirits were beginning to rise again.

A/N: Hope you like it. I promise, it will get better, this is only the opening. Reviews are appreciated, flames will be used for marshmallow-purposes.


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